No. 74. Apparently not drawn by Burgmair.The following cut is a reduced copy of that numbered 57; and which is the first of those representing horsemen bearing the banners of the several kingdoms, states, and cities subject to the house of Austria or to which Maximilian laid claim. It is one of the most gorgeous of the series; but, from the manner in which the horses and their riders are represented, I feel convinced that it has not been drawn by Burgmair. The subject is thus described in the emperor’s directions prefixed to the volume: “One on horseback bearing the banner of the arms of Austria; another on horseback bearing the old Austrian arms; another also on horseback bearing the arms of Stiria.” On the parts which are left black in the banners it had been intended to insert inscriptions. The instructions to the painter for this part of the procession are to the following effect: “One on horseback bearing on a lance a rhyme-tablet. Then the arms of the hereditary dominions of the house of Austria on banners, with their shields, helms, and crests, borne by horsemen; and the301banners of those countries in which the emperor has carried on war shall be borne by riders in armour; and the painter shall vary the armour according to the old manner. The banners of those countries in which the emperor has not carried on war shall be borne by horsemen without armour, but all splendidly clothed, each according to the costume of the country he represents. Every one shall wear a laurel wreath.”see text and captionNo. 57. Apparently not drawn by Burgmair.The cut on the next page is copied from that numbered 107, but which accords with the description of No. 122. The subject is described by the emperor as follows: “Then shall come riding a man of Calicut, naked, except his loins covered with a girdle, bearing a rhyme-tablet, on which shall be inscribed these words, ‘These people are the subjects of the famous crowns and houses heretofore named.’” In this cut the mark of Burgmair is perceived on the harness on the breast of the elephant. There are two other cuts of Indians belonging to the same part of the procession, each of which also contains Burgmair’s mark.see text and captionNo. 107. With Burgmair’s mark.The cuts which were to follow the Indians and close the procession were the baggage-waggons and camp-followers of the army. Of those there are five cuts in the work published in 1796, and it is evident that some are wanting, for the two which may be considered as the302first and last of those five, respectively require a preceding and a following cut to render them complete; and there are also one or two cuts wanting to complete the intermediate subjects. Those cuts are referred to in the French description under Nos. 125 to 129, but they are numbered 129, 128, 110, 111, 125. The last three, as parts of a large subject, follow each other as the numbers are here placed; and though the right side of No. 110 accords with the left of No. 128, inasmuch as they each contain the half of a tree which appears complete when they are joined together, yet there are no horses in No. 128 to draw the waggon which is seen in No. 110. The order of Nos. 110, 111, and 125, is easily ascertained; a horse at the left of No. 110 wants a tail which is to be found in No. 111; and the outline of a mountain in the left of No. 111 is continued in the right of No. 125. From the back-grounds, trees, and figures in those cuts I am very much inclined to think that they have been engraved from designs by Albert Durer, if he did not actually draw them on the block himself. There is no mark to be found on any of them; and they are extremely unlike any cuts which are undoubtedly of Burgmair’s designing, and they are303decidedly superior to any that are usually ascribed to Hans Schaufflein. The following, which is a reduced copy of that numbered 110, will perhaps afford some idea of those cuts, and enable persons who are acquainted with Durer’s works to judge for themselves with respect to the probability of their having been engraved from his designs. One or two of the other four contain still more striking resemblances of Durer’s style.see text and captionNo. 110. Probably drawn by Albert Durer.Besides the twelve cuts which, in the French preface to the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian, are said not to correspond with the original drawings, there are also six others which the editor says are not to be found in the original designs, and which he considers to have been additions made to the work while it was in the course of engraving. Those six cuts are described in an appendix, where their numbers are said to be from 130 to 135. In No. 130 the principal figures are a king and queen, on horseback, supposed to be intended for Philip the Fair, son of the Emperor Maximilian, and his wife Joanna of Castile. This cut is very indifferently executed, and has evidently been designed by the artist who made the drawings for the304questionable cuts containing the complicated locomotive carriages, mentioned at page 290. No. 131, a princess on horseback, accompanied by two female attendants also on horseback, and guards on foot, has evidently been designed by the same artist as No. 130. These two, I am inclined to think, belong to some other work. Nos. 132, 133, and 134, are from the designs of Hans Burgmair, whose mark is to be found on each; and there can be little doubt of their having been intended for Maximilian’s Triumphal Procession. They form one continuous subject, which represents twelve men, habited in various costume, leading the same number of horses splendidly caparisoned. A figure on horseback bearing a rhyme-tablet leads this part of the procession; and above the horses are large scrolls probably intended to contain their names, with those of the countries to which they belong. The cut on the opposite page is a reduced copy of the last, numbered 135, which is thus described in the appendix: “The fore part of a triumphal car, drawn by four horses yoked abreast, and managed by a winged female figure who holds in her left hand a wreath of laurel.” There is no mark on the original cut; but from the manner in which the horses are drawn it seems like one of Burgmair’s designing.That the cuts of the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian were engraved by different persons is certain from the names at their backs; and I think the difference that is to be perceived in the style of drawing renders it in the highest degree probable that the subjects were designed, or at least drawn on the wood, by different artists. I am inclined to think that Burgmair drew very few besides those that contain his mark; the cuts of the banner-bearers I am persuaded are not of his drawing; a third artist, of inferior talent, seems to have made the drawings of the fanciful cars containing the emperor and his family; and the five cuts of the baggage-waggons and camp followers, appear, as I have already said, extremely like the designs of Albert Durer. The best engraved cuts are to be found among those which contain Burgmair’s mark. Some of the banner-bearers are also very ably executed, though not in so free or bold a manner; which I conceive to be owing to the more laboured style in which the subject has been drawn on the block. The mechanical subjects, with their accompanying figures, are the worst engraved as well as the worst drawn of the whole. The five cuts which I suppose to have been designed by Albert Durer are engraved with great spirit, but not so well as the best of those which contain the mark of Burgmair.see text and captionNo. 135. Apparently designed by Burgmair.Though there are still in existence upwards of a hundred of the original blocks designed by Albert Durer, and upwards of three hundred designed by the most eminent of his contemporaries, yet a person who professes to be an instructor of the public on subjects of art made the following statement before the Select Committee of the House of305Commons on Arts and their Connexion with Manufactures, appointed in 1835. He is asked, “Do you consider that the progress of the arts in this country is impeded by the want of protection for new inventions of importance?” and he proceeds to enlighten the committee as follows. “Very much impeded. Inventions connected with the arts of design, of new instruments, or new processes, for example, are, from the ease with which they can be pirated, more difficult of protection than any other inventions whatever. Such protection as the existing laws afford is quite inadequate. I cannot better illustrate my meaning, than by mentioning the case ofengraving in metallic relief, an art which is supposed to have existed three or four centuries ago; and the re-discovery of which has long been a desideratum among artists. Albert Durer, who was both a painter and engraver,certainly possessed this art, that is to say, the art of transferring his designs, after they had been sketched on paper,immediately into metallic relief, so that they might be printed along with letter-press. At present, the only sort of engravings you can print along with letter-press are wood engravings, or stereotype casts from wood engravings; and then those engravings are but copies, and often very rude copies, of their originals; while, in the case of Albert Durer, it isQUITE CLEARthat it was his own identical designs that were transferred into the metallic relief. Wood engravings, too, are limited in point of size,because they can only be executed on box-wood, the width of which is very small; in fact, we have no wood engravings on a single block of a larger size than octavo: when the engraving is larger, two or three blocks are joined together; but this is attended with so much difficulty and inconvenience, that it is seldom done. From the306specimens ofmetallic relief engraving, left us by Albert Durer, there is every reason to infer that he was under no such limitation; that he could produce plates of any size.”V.80This statement abounds in errors, and may justify a suspicion that the person who made it had never seen the cuts designed by Albert Durer which he pretends were executed in “metallic relief.” At the commencement he says that the art of engraving in metallic relief issupposedto have existed three or four centuries ago; and immediately afterwards he asserts that Albert Durer “certainly possessed this art;” as if by his mere word he could convert a groundless fiction into a positive fact. When he made this confident assertion he seems not to have been aware that many of the original pear-tree blocks of the cuts pretendedly executed in metallic relief are still in existence; and when, speaking of the difficulty of getting blocks of a larger size than an octavo, he says, “From the specimens of metallic relief engraving, left us by Albert Durer, there is every reason to infer that he was under no such limitation,—that he could produce plates of any size,” he affords a positive proof that he knows nothing of the subject on which he has spoken so confidently. Had he ever examined the large cuts engraved from Durer’s designs, he would have seen, in several, undeniable marks of the junction of the blocks, proving directly the reverse of what he asserts on this point. What he says with respect to the modern practice of the art is as incorrect as his assertions about Albert Durer’s engraving in metallic relief. Though it is true that there are few modern engravings on box-wood of a larger size than octavo, it is not true that the forming of a large block of two or more pieces is attended with much difficulty, and is seldom done. The making of such blocks is now a regular trade; they are formed without the least difficulty, and hundreds of cuts on such blocks are engraved in London every year.V.81When he says that wood engravings “can only be made on box-wood,” he gives another proof of his ignorance of the subject. Most of the earlier wood engravings were executed on blocks of pear-tree or crab; and even at the present time box-wood is seldom used for the large cuts on posting-bills. In short, every statement that this person has made on the subject of wood and pretended metallic relief engraving is incorrect; and it is rather surprising that none of the307members of the committee should have exposed his ignorance. When such persons put themselves forward as the instructors of mechanics on the subject of art, it cannot be a matter of surprise that in the arts as applied to manufactures we should be inferior to our continental neighbours.The art of imitating drawings—called chiaro-scuro—by means of impressions from two or more blocks, was cultivated with great success in Italy by Ugo da Carpi about 1518. The invention of this art, as has been previously remarked, is ascribed to him by some writers, but without any sufficient grounds; for not even the slightest evidence has been produced by them to show that he, or any other Italian artist, had executed a single cut in this manner previous to 1509, the date of a chiaro-scuro wood engraving from a design by Lucas Cranach. Though it is highly probable that Ugo da Carpi was not the inventor of this art, it is certain that he greatly improved it. The chiaro-scuros executed by him are not only superior to those of the German artists, who most likely preceded him in this department of wood engraving, but to the present time they remain unsurpassed. In the present day Mr. George Baxter has attempted to extend the boundaries of this art by calling in the aid of aquatint for his outlines and first ground, and by copying the positive colours of an oil or water-colour painting. Most of Ugo da Carpi’s chiaro-scuros are from Raffaele’s designs, and it is said that the great painter himself drew some of the subjects on the blocks. Independent of the excellence of the designs, the characteristics of Da Carpi’s chiaro-scuros are their effect and the simplicity of their execution; for all of them, except one or two, appear to have been produced from not more than three blocks. The following may be mentioned as the principal of Da Carpi’s works in this style. A Sibyl reading with a boy holding a torch, from two blocks, said by Vasari to be the artist’s first attempt in this style; Jacob’s Dream; David cutting off the head of Goliah; the Death of Ananias; Giving the Keys to Peter; the miraculous Draught of Fishes; the Descent from the Cross; the Resurrection; and Æneas carrying away his father Anchises on his shoulders from the fire of Troy;V.82all the preceding from the designs of Raffaele. Among the subjects designed by other masters are St. Peter preaching, after Polidoro; and Diogenes showing the plucked cock in ridicule of Plato’s definition of man, “a two-legged animal without feathers,” after Parmegiano.308The latter, which is remarkably bold and spirited, is from four blocks; and Vasari says that it is the best of all Da Carpi’s chiaro-scuros. Many of Da Carpi’s productions in this style were copied by Andrea Andreani of Milan, about 1580. That of Æneas carrying his father on his shoulders was copied by Edward Kirkall, an English engraver in 1722. Kirkall’s copy is not entirely from wood-blocks, like the original; the outlines and the greater part of the shadows are from a copper-plate engraved in mezzotint, in a manner similar to that which has more recently been adopted by Mr. Baxter in his picture-printing.Lucas Dammetz, generally called Lucas van Leyden, from the place of his birth, was an excellent engraver on copper, and in this branch of art more nearly approached Durer than any other of his German or Flemish contemporaries. He is said to have been born at Leyden in 1496; and, if this date be correct, he at a very early age gave decided proofs of his talents as an engraver on copper. One of his earliest prints, the monk Sergius killed by Mahomet, is dated 1508, when he was only fourteen years of age; and at the age of twelve he is said to have painted, in distemper, a picture of St. Hubert which excited the admiration of all the artists of the time. Of his numerous copper-plate engravings there are no less than twenty-one which, though they contain no date, are supposed to have been executed previously to 1508. As several of those plates are of very considerable merit, it would appear that Lucas while yet a boy excelled, as a copper-plate engraver, most of his German and Dutch contemporaries. From 1508 to 1533, the year of his death, he appears to have engraved not less than two hundred copper-plates; and, as if these were not sufficient to occupy his time, he in the same period painted several pictures, some of which were of large size. He is also said to have excelled as a painter on glass; and like Durer, Cranach, and Burgmair, he is ranked among the wood engravers of that period.The wood-cuts which contain the mark of Lucas van Leyden, or which are usually ascribed to him, are not numerous; and, even admitting them to have been engraved by himself, the fact would contribute but little to his fame, for I have not seen one which might not have been executed by a professional “formschneider” of very moderate abilities. The total of the wood-cuts supposed to have been engraved by him does not exceed twenty. The following is a reduced copy of a wood-cut ascribed to Lucas van Leyden, in the Print Room of the British Museum, but which is not in Bartsch’s Catalogue, nor in the list of Lucas van Leyden’s engravings in Meusel’s Neue Miscellaneen. Though I very much question if the original cut were engraved by Lucas himself, I have no doubt of its being from his design. It represents the death of Sisera; and, with a noble contempt of the unity of time, Jael is seen giving Sisera a drink of milk, driving the nail into his head, and309then showing the body,—with herself in the act of driving the nail,—to Barak and his followers: the absurdity of this threefold action has perhaps never been surpassed in any cut ancient or modern. Sir Boyle Roach said that it was impossible for anyperson, except abirdor afish, to be in two places at once; but here we have a pictorial representation of a female being in no less than three; and in one of the localities actually pointing out to certain persons how she was then employed in another.see textHeineken, in his account of engravers of the Flemish school, has either committed an egregious mistake, or expressed himself with intentional ambiguity with respect to a wood-cut printed at Antwerp, and which he saw in the collections of the Abbé de Marolles. His notice of this cut is as follows: “I found in the collections of the Abbé de Marolles, in the cabinet of the King of France, a detached310piece, which, in my opinion, is the most ancient of the wood engravings executed in the Low Countries which bear the name of the artist. This cut is marked,Gheprint t’ Antwerpen by my Phillery de figursnider—Printed at Antwerp, by me Phillery, the engraver of figures. It serves as a proof that the engravers of moulds were, at Antwerp, in that ancient time, also printers.”V.83In this vague and ambiguous account, the writer gives us no idea of the period to which he refers in the words “cet ancien tems.” If he means the time between the pretended invention of Coster, and the period when typography was probably first practised in the Low Countries,—that is, from about 1430 to 1472,—he is wrong, and his statement would afford ground for a presumption that he had either examined the cut very carelessly, or that he was so superficially acquainted with the progressive improvement of the art of wood engraving as to mistake a cut abounding in cross-hatching, and certainly executed subsequent to 1524, for one that had been executed about seventy years previously, when cross-hatching was never attempted, and when the costume was as different from that of the figures represented in the cut as the costume of Vandyke’s portraits is dissimilar to Hogarth’s. The words “graveurs de moules,” I have translated literally “engravers of moulds,” for I cannot conceive what else Heineken can mean; but this expression is scarcely warranted by the word “figuersnider” on the cut, which is almost the same as the German “formschneider;” and whatever might be the original meaning of the word, it was certainly used to express merely a wood engraver. Compilers of Histories of Art, and Dictionaries of Painters and Engravers, who usually follow their leader, even in his slips, as regularly as a flock of sheep follow the bell-wether through a gap, have disseminated Heineken’s mistake, and the antiquity of “Phillery’s” wood-engraving is about as firmly established as Lawrence Coster’s invention of typography. One of those “straightforward” people has indeed gone rather beyond his authority; for in a “Dictionary of the Fine Arts,” published in 1826, we are expressly informed that “Phillery, who lived near the end of the fourteenth century, was the first engraver on wood who practised in the Netherlands.”V.84It is thus that311error on the subject of art, and indeed on every other subject, is propagated: a writer of reputation makes an incorrect or an ambiguous statement; other writers adopt it without examination, and not unfrequently one of that class whose confidence in deciding on a question is in the inverse ratio of their knowledge of the subject, proceeds beyond his original authority, and declares that to be certain which previously had only been doubtfully or obscurely expressed. In Heineken’s notice of this cut there is an implied qualification under which he might screen himself from a charge of incorrectness with respect to the time of its execution, though not from a charge of ambiguity. He says that, in his opinion, it is “the most ancient of the wood engravings executed in the Low Countrieswhich bear the name of the artist;” and with this limitation his opinion may be correct, although the cut were only engraved in 1525 or 1526; for I am not aware of any wood engraving of an earlier date, executed in the Low Countries, that contains thenameof the artist, though there are several which contain the artist’s mark. It also may be argued that the words “cet ancien tems” might be about as correctly applied to designate the year 1525 as 1470: if, however, he meant the first of those dates, he has expressed himself in an equivocal manner, for he is generally understood to refer the cut to a considerably earlier period. It has been indeed conjectured that Heineken, in speaking of this cut, might intentionally express himself obscurely, in order that he might not give offence to his friend Monsieur Mariette, who is said to have considered it to be one of the earliest specimens of wood engravings executed in the Low Countries. This is, however, without any sufficient reason, merely shifting the charge of ignorance, with respect to the difference of style in wood engravings of different periods, from Heineken to Monsieur Mariette. As there is no evidence to show that the latter ever expressed any such opinion as that ascribed to him respecting the antiquity of the cut in question, Heineken alone is answerable for the account contained in his book. Impressions of the cut by “Phillery” are not of very great rarity; there are two in the Print Room at the British Museum, and from one of them the reduced copy in the following page has been carefully made.see textAny person, however, slightly acquainted with the progress of wood engraving could scarcely fail to pronounce that the original of this cut must have been executed subsequent to 1500, and in all probability subsequent to the cuts of the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian, to the general style of which, so far as relates to the manner of engraving, it bears considerable resemblance. The costume of the figures, too, also proves that it does not belong to the fifteenth century;312and on carefully examining the inscription, a person accustomed to the old German or Dutch characters would be more likely to read “Willem” than “Phillery” as the name of the artist. To one of the impressions in the British Museum a former owner, after extracting Heineken’s account, has appended the following remark: “This is the print above described. There seems to be an inconsiderable mistake in the name, which I take to be D’villery.” It is to be observed that in the original, as in the preceding copy, the inscription is engraved on wood, and not set up in type; and that consequently the first character of the doubtful name is rather indistinct. It is however313most probably aW; and the last is certainly anm, with a flourish at its tail. The intermediate lettersilleare plain enough, and if the first be supposed to be aW, and the last anm, we have the nameWillem,—a very probable prenomen for a Dutch wood engraver of the sixteenth century. The inscription when carefully examined is literally as follows: “Gheprint Tantwerpen Bij mij Willem de Figuersnider.” Heineken’s mistake ofPhilleryforWillem, or William, and thus giving a heretofore unheard-of name to the list of artists, is not unlike that of Scopoli the naturalist, who, in one of his works, has commemorated “Horace Head” as a London bookseller.V.85see textThough the cut which bears the name of the supposed “Phillery” contains internal evidence of its not having been engraved in the fifteenth century, there is yet further reason to believe that it is merely a copy of part of a cut of the same size by a Swiss artist of the name of Urse Graff, which is dated 1524. There is an impression of Urse Graff’s cutV.86in the Print Room of the British Museum; in the fore-ground are the figures which have obviously been copied byWillem de Figuersnider, aliasPhillery, and immediately behind the middle figure, who holds in his right hand a large Swiss espadon, is a leafless tree with a figure of Death clinging to the upper part of the trunk, and pointing to a hour-glass which he holds in his left hand. A bird, probably intended for a raven, is perched above the hour-glass; and on the trunk of the tree, near to the figure of Death, is Urse Graff’s mark with the date as is here given. The back-ground presents a view of a lake, with buildings and mountains on the left. The general character of Urse Graff’s subject is Swiss, both in the scenery and figures; and the perfect identity of the latter with those in the cut “printed at Antwerp by William the figure-cutter” proves, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that one of those two artists has copied the work of the other. Urse Graff’s subject, however, is complete, and corresponds both in the landscape and in the costume of the figures with the country of the artist; while the cut of William of Antwerp represents merely an unrelieved group of figures in the costume of Switzerland. Urse Graff was an artist of reputation in his time; of “Willem,” who was probably only an engraver of the designs of others, nothing more is known beyond what is afforded by the single cut in question. From these circumstances,314though it cannot be positively decided which of those cuts is the original, it is almost morally certain that the Flemish figure-cutter has copied the work of the Swiss artist.—Urse Graff resided at Basle, of which city he was probably a native. In one of his engravings with the date 1523, he describes himself as a goldsmith and die-sinker. Wood-cuts containing his mark are not very common, and the most of them appear to have been executed between 1515 and 1528. A series of wood-cuts of the Passion of Christ, designed in a very inferior manner, and printed at Strasburg in 1509, are sometimes ascribed to him on account of their being marked with the letters V. G., which some writers have supposed to be the mark of an artist named Von Gamperlin. Professor Christ, in his Dictionary of Monograms, says that he can find nothing to determine him in favour of the name Gamperlin; and that he is rather inclined to think that those letters are intended for the name Von Goar, which he believes that he has deciphered on an engraving containing this mark. The mark of Urse Graff, a V and a G interlaced, occurs in the ornamented border of the title-page of several books printed at Basle, and amongst others on the title of a quarto edition of Ulrich Hutten’s Nemo, printed there by Frobenius in 1519. At the end of this edition there is a beautifully-designed cut of the printer’s device, which is probably the work of the same artist.V.87A painter, named Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch, a contemporary of Urse Graff, and who resided at Bern, is said, by Sandrart, to have been of a noble English family, and the same writer adds that he left his own country on account of his religion. The latter statement, however, is not likely to be correct, for there are wood-cuts, with this artist’s mark, dated “Bern, 1518;” which was before the persecution in England on account of the doctrines of Luther had commenced. In J. R. Füssli’s Dictionary of Artists it is stated that he was of a French family, of the name of Cholard, but that he was born at Bern in 1484, and died there in 1530. He was a poet as well as a painter, and held one of the highest offices in the magistracy of Bern.Within the first thirty years of the sixteenth century the practice of illustrating books with wood-cuts seems to have been more general than at any other period, scarcely excepting the present; for though within the last eight or ten years an immense number of wood-cuts have been executed in England and France, yet wood engravings at the time referred to were introduced into a greater variety of books, and the art was more generally practised throughout Europe. In315modern German and Dutch works wood engravings are sparingly introduced; and in works printed in Switzerland and Italy they are still more rarely to be found. In the former period the art seems to have been very generally practised throughout Europe, though to a greater extent, and with greater skill, in Germany than in any other country. The wood-cuts which are to be found in Italian books printed between 1500 and 1530 are mostly meagre in design and very indifferently engraved; and for many years after the German wood engravers had begun to give variety of colour and richness of effect to their cuts by means of cross-hatchings, their Italian contemporaries continued to adhere to the old method of engraving their figures, chiefly in outline, with the shadows and the folds of the draperies indicated by parallel lines. These observations relate only to the ordinary wood engravings of the period, printed in the same page with type, or printed separately in the usual manner of surface printing at one impression. The admirable chiaro-scuros of Ugo da Carpi, printed from two or more blocks, are for effect and general excellence the most admirable specimens of this branch of the art that ever have been executed; they are as superior to the chiaro-scuros of German artists as the usual wood engravings of the latter excel those executed in Italy during the same period.see textsee textsee textIn point of drawing, some of the best wood-cuts executed in Italy in the time of Albert Durer are to be found in a folio work entitled Triompho di Fortuna, written by Sigismond Fanti, and printed at Venice in 1527.V.88The subject of this work, which was licensed by Pope Clement VII, is the art of fortune-telling, or of answering all kinds of questions relative to future events. The volume contains a considerable number of wood-cuts; some designed and executed in the very humblest style of wood engraving, and others, which appear to have been drawn on the block with pen-and-ink, designed with great316spirit. The smallest and most inferior cuts serve as illustrations to the questions, and an idea may be formed of them from the three here given, which occur under the question: “Qual fede o legge sia di queste tre la buona, o la Christiana, l’Hebrea, o quello di Mahumeto?”V.89In English: “Which of these three religions is the best, the Christian, the Jewish, or the Mahometan?” Several larger cuts are executed in a dry hard style, and evidently drawn by a person very inferior to the artist who designed the cuts executed in the manner of pen-and-ink drawings. The following is a fac-simile of one of the latter. It is entitled “Fortuna de Africo,” in a series of twelve, intended for representations of the winds.see textThe following cut, which appears in folio 38, is intitled “Michael Fiorentino,”—Michael Angelo; and it certainly conveys no bad idea317of the energetic manner in which that great artist is said to have used his mallet and chisel when engaged on works of sculpture. This cut, however, is made to represent several other sculptors besides the great Florentine; it is repeated seven times in the subsequent pages, and on each occasion we find underneath it a different name. The late T. Stothard, R.A. was of opinion that wood engraving was best adapted to express pen-and-ink drawing, and that the wood engraver generally failed when he attempted more. His illustrations of Rogers’s poems, engraved on wood by Clennell and Thompson, are executed in a similar style to that of the following specimen, though with greater delicacy.see textCertain wood-cuts with the mark A. G., executed towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, have been ascribed to an artist named Albert Glockenton. Bartsch, however, says that the name of the artist is unknown; and he seems to consider that Sandrart had merely conjectured that those letters might represent the name Albert Glockenton. For no better reason the letters I. V. on a tablet, with two pilgrim’s-staffs crossed between them, which are to be found on several old chiaro-scuro wood engravings, have been supposed to represent the name, John Ulric Pilgrim. This name appears to be a pure invention of some ingenious expounder of monograms, for there is not the slightest evidence, that I am aware of, to show that any artist of this name ever318lived. The chiaro-scuros with this mark were probably executed in the time of Durer, but none of them contains a date to establish the fact. Heineken considers them to have been the productions of a German artist; and he refers to them in proof of the art of chiaro-scuro having been practised in Germany long before the time of Ugo da Carpi. It is, however, highly questionable if they are of an earlier date than 1518; and it is by no means certain that the artist was a German. By some persons he has been supposed to have been the inventor of chiaro-scuro engraving, on no better grounds, it would seem, than that his pieces are without a date.Next to the Germans, in the time of Albert Durer, the Dutch and Flemings seem to have excelled in the art of wood engraving; but the cuts executed in Holland and Flanders are generally much inferior to those designed and engraved by German artists. In a considerable number of Dutch wood engravings, of the period under review, I have observed an attempt to combine something like the effect of cross-hatching and of the dotted manner mentioned at page 232 as having been frequently practised by French wood engravers in the early part of the sixteenth century. In a series of cuts from a Dutch prayer-book, apparently printed between 1520 and 1530, this style of engraving is frequently introduced. Where a German artist would have introduced lines crossing each other with great regularity, the Dutch wood engraver has endeavoured to attain his object by irregularly picking out portions of the wood with the point of his graver; the effect, however, is not good. In the border surrounding those cuts, a Dance of Death is represented, consisting of several more characters than are to be found in the celebrated work ascribed to Holbein, but far inferior in point of design and execution.An artist, named John Walter van Assen, is usually mentioned as one of the best Dutch wood engravers or designers of this period. Nothing further is known of him than that he lived at Amsterdam about 1517. The mark supposed to be Van Assen’s is often ascribed by expounders of monograms to another artist whom they call Werner or Waer van Assanen.A considerable number of French works, printed in the time of Albert Durer, contain wood engravings, but few of them possess much merit when compared with the more highly finished and correctly drawn productions of the German school of the same period. The ornamental borders, however, of many missals and prayer-books, which then issued in great numbers from the Parisian press, frequently display great beauty. The taste for surrounding each page with an ornamental border engraved on wood was very generally prevalent in Germany, France, and Flanders at that period, more especially in devotional works; and in the319former country, and in Switzerland, scarcely a tract was printed—and the Lutheran controversy gave rise to many hundreds—without an ornamental border surrounding the title. In Germany such wood engravers as were chiefly employed in executing cuts of this kind were calledRahmen-schneiders—border-cutters,—as has been previously observed at page 190. In England during the same period wood engraving made but little progress; and there seems to have been a lack of good designers and competent engravers in this country. The best cuts printed in England in the time of Durer are contained in a manual of prayers, of a small duodecimo size. On a tablet in the border of one of the cuts—the Flight into EgyptV.90—I perceive the date 1523. The total number of cuts in the volume is about a hundred; and under each of the largest are four verses in English. Several of the smaller cuts, representing figures of saints, and preceding the prayers for their respective days, have evidently been designed by an artist of considerable talent. As most of the wood-cuts which constitute the ornaments or the illustrations of books printed at this period are without any name or mark, it is impossible to ascertain the names of the persons by whom they were designed or engraved.The manner of wood engraving inintaglioso that the figures appear white on a black ground, so frequently adopted by early Italian wood engravers, was sometimes practised in Germany; and in one of the earliest works containing portraits of the Roman emperors,V.91copied from ancient medals, printed in the latter country, the cuts are executed in this style. The subject of the work is the lives of the Roman emperors, written by Joannes Huttichius, and the portraits with which it is illustrated are copied from medals in a collection which had been formed by the Emperor Maximilian, the great promoter of wood engraving in Germany. The first edition, in Latin, was printed by Wolff Köpffel, at Strasburg, in 1525; and a second edition, in German, was published at the same place in the succeeding year. The cut on the next page, of the head of Nero, will afford an idea of the style in which the portraits are320executed, and of the fidelity with which the artist has in general represented the likeness impressed on the original medals.Besides Durer, Burgmair, Cranach, and Schaufflein, there are several other German painters of the same period who are also said to have engraved on wood, and among the most celebrated of this secondary class the following may be mentioned: Hans Sebald Behaim, previously noticed at page 253; Albert Altdorffer; Hans Springinklee; and Hans Baldung Grün. The marks of all those artists are to be found on wood-cuts executed in the time of Durer; but I am extremely doubtful if those cuts were actually engraved by themselves. If they were, I can only say that, though they might be good painters and designers, they were very indifferent wood engravers; and that their time in executing the subjects ascribed to them must have been very badly employed. The common workingformschneiderwho could not execute them as well, must have been a very ordinary wood-cutter, not to say wood-engraver,—by the latter term meaning one who excels in his profession, and not a mere cutter of lines, without skill or taste, on box or pear-tree.see textAlbert Altdorffer was born at Ratisbon in 1480, and afterwards became a magistrate of his native city. The engravings on wood and copper containing his mark are mostly of a small size, and he is generally known as one of thelittle mastersof the German school of engraving.V.92Hans Springinklee was a painter of some eminence, and according to Doppelmayer, as referred to by Bartsch, was a pupil of Durer’s. His mark is to be found on several wood-cuts; and it occurs in one of the illustrations in the Wise King. Hans Baldung Grün was born at Gemund in Suabia, and studied at Nuremberg under Albert Durer. He excelled as a painter; and the wood-cuts which contain his321mark are mostly designed with great spirit. The earliest wood engraving that contains his mark is a frontispiece to a volume of sermons with the date 1508; and the latest is a group of horses, engraved in a hard, stiff manner, with the name “Baldung” and the date 1534.V.93He chiefly resided at Strasburg, where he died in 1545. He is mentioned by Durer, in his Journal, by the name of “Grün Hannsen.”see textWe may here conveniently introduce fac-similes on a reduced scale of two rather interesting wood engravings given by Dr. Dibdin in his Bibliomania, and copied from an early folio volume, entitledRevelationes cœlestes sanctæ Brigittæ de Suecia, printed at Nuremberg by Anthony Köberger,M CCC XXI.mensis Septembris, which some read 1500, on the 21st of September, others 1521, in the month of September. The first of these cuts is curious as representing the simplicity of an ancient reading room, with its three-legged joint stool, such as is so prettily described by Cowper, Task, I. v. 19; the other cut describes a punishment322which is said to have been revealed to St. Bridget against those ladies who have “ornamenta indecentia capitibus et pedibus, et reliquis membris, ad provocandam luxuriam, et irritandum Deum, in strictis vestibus, ostensione mamillarum, unctionibus, &c.” The artist is unknown, but seems to be among the best of the Nuremberg school.see textIt cannot be reasonably doubted that Durer and several other German painters of his time were accustomed to engrave their own designs on copper; for in many instances we have the express testimony of their contemporaries, and not unfrequently their own, to the fact. Copper-plate engraving for about sixty years from the time of its invention was generally practised by persons who were also painters, and who usually engraved their own designs. Wood engraving, on the contrary, from an early period was practised as a distinct profession by persons who are never heard of as painters. That some of the early German painters—of a period when “artists were more of workmen, and workmen more of artists”V.94than in the present day—mightengrave some of the wood-cuts which bear their marks, is certainly not impossible; but it is highly improbable that all the wood-cuts which are ascribed to them should have been executed by themselves. If any wood-cuts were actually engraved by Durer, Cranach, Burgmair, and other painters of reputation, I conceive that such cuts are not to be distinguished by their superior execution from those engraved by the professionalformschneiderandbrief-malerof the day. The best copper-plates engraved by Albert Durer can scarcely be surpassed by the best copper-plate engraver of the present day,—that is, supposing him to execute his work by the same means; while the best of the wood-cuts which he is supposed to have engraved himself might be readily executed by a score of modern323wood engravers if the subject were drawn for them on the block. In the age of Durer the best wood-cuts are of comparatively large size, and are distinguished more from the boldness and freedom of their design than from any peculiar excellence of engraving: they display, in fact, rather the talent of theartistthan the skill of theworkman. Though wood engraving had very greatly improved from about the end of the fifteenth century to the time of Durer’s decease, yet it certainly did not attain its perfection within that period. In later years, indeed, the workman has displayed greater excellence; but at no time does the art appear to have been more flourishing or more highly esteemed than in the reign of its great patron, the Emperor Maximilian.see text
No. 74. Apparently not drawn by Burgmair.
The following cut is a reduced copy of that numbered 57; and which is the first of those representing horsemen bearing the banners of the several kingdoms, states, and cities subject to the house of Austria or to which Maximilian laid claim. It is one of the most gorgeous of the series; but, from the manner in which the horses and their riders are represented, I feel convinced that it has not been drawn by Burgmair. The subject is thus described in the emperor’s directions prefixed to the volume: “One on horseback bearing the banner of the arms of Austria; another on horseback bearing the old Austrian arms; another also on horseback bearing the arms of Stiria.” On the parts which are left black in the banners it had been intended to insert inscriptions. The instructions to the painter for this part of the procession are to the following effect: “One on horseback bearing on a lance a rhyme-tablet. Then the arms of the hereditary dominions of the house of Austria on banners, with their shields, helms, and crests, borne by horsemen; and the301banners of those countries in which the emperor has carried on war shall be borne by riders in armour; and the painter shall vary the armour according to the old manner. The banners of those countries in which the emperor has not carried on war shall be borne by horsemen without armour, but all splendidly clothed, each according to the costume of the country he represents. Every one shall wear a laurel wreath.”
see text and caption
No. 57. Apparently not drawn by Burgmair.
The cut on the next page is copied from that numbered 107, but which accords with the description of No. 122. The subject is described by the emperor as follows: “Then shall come riding a man of Calicut, naked, except his loins covered with a girdle, bearing a rhyme-tablet, on which shall be inscribed these words, ‘These people are the subjects of the famous crowns and houses heretofore named.’” In this cut the mark of Burgmair is perceived on the harness on the breast of the elephant. There are two other cuts of Indians belonging to the same part of the procession, each of which also contains Burgmair’s mark.
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No. 107. With Burgmair’s mark.
The cuts which were to follow the Indians and close the procession were the baggage-waggons and camp-followers of the army. Of those there are five cuts in the work published in 1796, and it is evident that some are wanting, for the two which may be considered as the302first and last of those five, respectively require a preceding and a following cut to render them complete; and there are also one or two cuts wanting to complete the intermediate subjects. Those cuts are referred to in the French description under Nos. 125 to 129, but they are numbered 129, 128, 110, 111, 125. The last three, as parts of a large subject, follow each other as the numbers are here placed; and though the right side of No. 110 accords with the left of No. 128, inasmuch as they each contain the half of a tree which appears complete when they are joined together, yet there are no horses in No. 128 to draw the waggon which is seen in No. 110. The order of Nos. 110, 111, and 125, is easily ascertained; a horse at the left of No. 110 wants a tail which is to be found in No. 111; and the outline of a mountain in the left of No. 111 is continued in the right of No. 125. From the back-grounds, trees, and figures in those cuts I am very much inclined to think that they have been engraved from designs by Albert Durer, if he did not actually draw them on the block himself. There is no mark to be found on any of them; and they are extremely unlike any cuts which are undoubtedly of Burgmair’s designing, and they are303decidedly superior to any that are usually ascribed to Hans Schaufflein. The following, which is a reduced copy of that numbered 110, will perhaps afford some idea of those cuts, and enable persons who are acquainted with Durer’s works to judge for themselves with respect to the probability of their having been engraved from his designs. One or two of the other four contain still more striking resemblances of Durer’s style.
see text and caption
No. 110. Probably drawn by Albert Durer.
Besides the twelve cuts which, in the French preface to the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian, are said not to correspond with the original drawings, there are also six others which the editor says are not to be found in the original designs, and which he considers to have been additions made to the work while it was in the course of engraving. Those six cuts are described in an appendix, where their numbers are said to be from 130 to 135. In No. 130 the principal figures are a king and queen, on horseback, supposed to be intended for Philip the Fair, son of the Emperor Maximilian, and his wife Joanna of Castile. This cut is very indifferently executed, and has evidently been designed by the artist who made the drawings for the304questionable cuts containing the complicated locomotive carriages, mentioned at page 290. No. 131, a princess on horseback, accompanied by two female attendants also on horseback, and guards on foot, has evidently been designed by the same artist as No. 130. These two, I am inclined to think, belong to some other work. Nos. 132, 133, and 134, are from the designs of Hans Burgmair, whose mark is to be found on each; and there can be little doubt of their having been intended for Maximilian’s Triumphal Procession. They form one continuous subject, which represents twelve men, habited in various costume, leading the same number of horses splendidly caparisoned. A figure on horseback bearing a rhyme-tablet leads this part of the procession; and above the horses are large scrolls probably intended to contain their names, with those of the countries to which they belong. The cut on the opposite page is a reduced copy of the last, numbered 135, which is thus described in the appendix: “The fore part of a triumphal car, drawn by four horses yoked abreast, and managed by a winged female figure who holds in her left hand a wreath of laurel.” There is no mark on the original cut; but from the manner in which the horses are drawn it seems like one of Burgmair’s designing.
That the cuts of the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian were engraved by different persons is certain from the names at their backs; and I think the difference that is to be perceived in the style of drawing renders it in the highest degree probable that the subjects were designed, or at least drawn on the wood, by different artists. I am inclined to think that Burgmair drew very few besides those that contain his mark; the cuts of the banner-bearers I am persuaded are not of his drawing; a third artist, of inferior talent, seems to have made the drawings of the fanciful cars containing the emperor and his family; and the five cuts of the baggage-waggons and camp followers, appear, as I have already said, extremely like the designs of Albert Durer. The best engraved cuts are to be found among those which contain Burgmair’s mark. Some of the banner-bearers are also very ably executed, though not in so free or bold a manner; which I conceive to be owing to the more laboured style in which the subject has been drawn on the block. The mechanical subjects, with their accompanying figures, are the worst engraved as well as the worst drawn of the whole. The five cuts which I suppose to have been designed by Albert Durer are engraved with great spirit, but not so well as the best of those which contain the mark of Burgmair.
see text and caption
No. 135. Apparently designed by Burgmair.
Though there are still in existence upwards of a hundred of the original blocks designed by Albert Durer, and upwards of three hundred designed by the most eminent of his contemporaries, yet a person who professes to be an instructor of the public on subjects of art made the following statement before the Select Committee of the House of305Commons on Arts and their Connexion with Manufactures, appointed in 1835. He is asked, “Do you consider that the progress of the arts in this country is impeded by the want of protection for new inventions of importance?” and he proceeds to enlighten the committee as follows. “Very much impeded. Inventions connected with the arts of design, of new instruments, or new processes, for example, are, from the ease with which they can be pirated, more difficult of protection than any other inventions whatever. Such protection as the existing laws afford is quite inadequate. I cannot better illustrate my meaning, than by mentioning the case ofengraving in metallic relief, an art which is supposed to have existed three or four centuries ago; and the re-discovery of which has long been a desideratum among artists. Albert Durer, who was both a painter and engraver,certainly possessed this art, that is to say, the art of transferring his designs, after they had been sketched on paper,immediately into metallic relief, so that they might be printed along with letter-press. At present, the only sort of engravings you can print along with letter-press are wood engravings, or stereotype casts from wood engravings; and then those engravings are but copies, and often very rude copies, of their originals; while, in the case of Albert Durer, it isQUITE CLEARthat it was his own identical designs that were transferred into the metallic relief. Wood engravings, too, are limited in point of size,because they can only be executed on box-wood, the width of which is very small; in fact, we have no wood engravings on a single block of a larger size than octavo: when the engraving is larger, two or three blocks are joined together; but this is attended with so much difficulty and inconvenience, that it is seldom done. From the306specimens ofmetallic relief engraving, left us by Albert Durer, there is every reason to infer that he was under no such limitation; that he could produce plates of any size.”V.80This statement abounds in errors, and may justify a suspicion that the person who made it had never seen the cuts designed by Albert Durer which he pretends were executed in “metallic relief.” At the commencement he says that the art of engraving in metallic relief issupposedto have existed three or four centuries ago; and immediately afterwards he asserts that Albert Durer “certainly possessed this art;” as if by his mere word he could convert a groundless fiction into a positive fact. When he made this confident assertion he seems not to have been aware that many of the original pear-tree blocks of the cuts pretendedly executed in metallic relief are still in existence; and when, speaking of the difficulty of getting blocks of a larger size than an octavo, he says, “From the specimens of metallic relief engraving, left us by Albert Durer, there is every reason to infer that he was under no such limitation,—that he could produce plates of any size,” he affords a positive proof that he knows nothing of the subject on which he has spoken so confidently. Had he ever examined the large cuts engraved from Durer’s designs, he would have seen, in several, undeniable marks of the junction of the blocks, proving directly the reverse of what he asserts on this point. What he says with respect to the modern practice of the art is as incorrect as his assertions about Albert Durer’s engraving in metallic relief. Though it is true that there are few modern engravings on box-wood of a larger size than octavo, it is not true that the forming of a large block of two or more pieces is attended with much difficulty, and is seldom done. The making of such blocks is now a regular trade; they are formed without the least difficulty, and hundreds of cuts on such blocks are engraved in London every year.V.81When he says that wood engravings “can only be made on box-wood,” he gives another proof of his ignorance of the subject. Most of the earlier wood engravings were executed on blocks of pear-tree or crab; and even at the present time box-wood is seldom used for the large cuts on posting-bills. In short, every statement that this person has made on the subject of wood and pretended metallic relief engraving is incorrect; and it is rather surprising that none of the307members of the committee should have exposed his ignorance. When such persons put themselves forward as the instructors of mechanics on the subject of art, it cannot be a matter of surprise that in the arts as applied to manufactures we should be inferior to our continental neighbours.
The art of imitating drawings—called chiaro-scuro—by means of impressions from two or more blocks, was cultivated with great success in Italy by Ugo da Carpi about 1518. The invention of this art, as has been previously remarked, is ascribed to him by some writers, but without any sufficient grounds; for not even the slightest evidence has been produced by them to show that he, or any other Italian artist, had executed a single cut in this manner previous to 1509, the date of a chiaro-scuro wood engraving from a design by Lucas Cranach. Though it is highly probable that Ugo da Carpi was not the inventor of this art, it is certain that he greatly improved it. The chiaro-scuros executed by him are not only superior to those of the German artists, who most likely preceded him in this department of wood engraving, but to the present time they remain unsurpassed. In the present day Mr. George Baxter has attempted to extend the boundaries of this art by calling in the aid of aquatint for his outlines and first ground, and by copying the positive colours of an oil or water-colour painting. Most of Ugo da Carpi’s chiaro-scuros are from Raffaele’s designs, and it is said that the great painter himself drew some of the subjects on the blocks. Independent of the excellence of the designs, the characteristics of Da Carpi’s chiaro-scuros are their effect and the simplicity of their execution; for all of them, except one or two, appear to have been produced from not more than three blocks. The following may be mentioned as the principal of Da Carpi’s works in this style. A Sibyl reading with a boy holding a torch, from two blocks, said by Vasari to be the artist’s first attempt in this style; Jacob’s Dream; David cutting off the head of Goliah; the Death of Ananias; Giving the Keys to Peter; the miraculous Draught of Fishes; the Descent from the Cross; the Resurrection; and Æneas carrying away his father Anchises on his shoulders from the fire of Troy;V.82all the preceding from the designs of Raffaele. Among the subjects designed by other masters are St. Peter preaching, after Polidoro; and Diogenes showing the plucked cock in ridicule of Plato’s definition of man, “a two-legged animal without feathers,” after Parmegiano.308The latter, which is remarkably bold and spirited, is from four blocks; and Vasari says that it is the best of all Da Carpi’s chiaro-scuros. Many of Da Carpi’s productions in this style were copied by Andrea Andreani of Milan, about 1580. That of Æneas carrying his father on his shoulders was copied by Edward Kirkall, an English engraver in 1722. Kirkall’s copy is not entirely from wood-blocks, like the original; the outlines and the greater part of the shadows are from a copper-plate engraved in mezzotint, in a manner similar to that which has more recently been adopted by Mr. Baxter in his picture-printing.
Lucas Dammetz, generally called Lucas van Leyden, from the place of his birth, was an excellent engraver on copper, and in this branch of art more nearly approached Durer than any other of his German or Flemish contemporaries. He is said to have been born at Leyden in 1496; and, if this date be correct, he at a very early age gave decided proofs of his talents as an engraver on copper. One of his earliest prints, the monk Sergius killed by Mahomet, is dated 1508, when he was only fourteen years of age; and at the age of twelve he is said to have painted, in distemper, a picture of St. Hubert which excited the admiration of all the artists of the time. Of his numerous copper-plate engravings there are no less than twenty-one which, though they contain no date, are supposed to have been executed previously to 1508. As several of those plates are of very considerable merit, it would appear that Lucas while yet a boy excelled, as a copper-plate engraver, most of his German and Dutch contemporaries. From 1508 to 1533, the year of his death, he appears to have engraved not less than two hundred copper-plates; and, as if these were not sufficient to occupy his time, he in the same period painted several pictures, some of which were of large size. He is also said to have excelled as a painter on glass; and like Durer, Cranach, and Burgmair, he is ranked among the wood engravers of that period.
The wood-cuts which contain the mark of Lucas van Leyden, or which are usually ascribed to him, are not numerous; and, even admitting them to have been engraved by himself, the fact would contribute but little to his fame, for I have not seen one which might not have been executed by a professional “formschneider” of very moderate abilities. The total of the wood-cuts supposed to have been engraved by him does not exceed twenty. The following is a reduced copy of a wood-cut ascribed to Lucas van Leyden, in the Print Room of the British Museum, but which is not in Bartsch’s Catalogue, nor in the list of Lucas van Leyden’s engravings in Meusel’s Neue Miscellaneen. Though I very much question if the original cut were engraved by Lucas himself, I have no doubt of its being from his design. It represents the death of Sisera; and, with a noble contempt of the unity of time, Jael is seen giving Sisera a drink of milk, driving the nail into his head, and309then showing the body,—with herself in the act of driving the nail,—to Barak and his followers: the absurdity of this threefold action has perhaps never been surpassed in any cut ancient or modern. Sir Boyle Roach said that it was impossible for anyperson, except abirdor afish, to be in two places at once; but here we have a pictorial representation of a female being in no less than three; and in one of the localities actually pointing out to certain persons how she was then employed in another.
see text
Heineken, in his account of engravers of the Flemish school, has either committed an egregious mistake, or expressed himself with intentional ambiguity with respect to a wood-cut printed at Antwerp, and which he saw in the collections of the Abbé de Marolles. His notice of this cut is as follows: “I found in the collections of the Abbé de Marolles, in the cabinet of the King of France, a detached310piece, which, in my opinion, is the most ancient of the wood engravings executed in the Low Countries which bear the name of the artist. This cut is marked,Gheprint t’ Antwerpen by my Phillery de figursnider—Printed at Antwerp, by me Phillery, the engraver of figures. It serves as a proof that the engravers of moulds were, at Antwerp, in that ancient time, also printers.”V.83
In this vague and ambiguous account, the writer gives us no idea of the period to which he refers in the words “cet ancien tems.” If he means the time between the pretended invention of Coster, and the period when typography was probably first practised in the Low Countries,—that is, from about 1430 to 1472,—he is wrong, and his statement would afford ground for a presumption that he had either examined the cut very carelessly, or that he was so superficially acquainted with the progressive improvement of the art of wood engraving as to mistake a cut abounding in cross-hatching, and certainly executed subsequent to 1524, for one that had been executed about seventy years previously, when cross-hatching was never attempted, and when the costume was as different from that of the figures represented in the cut as the costume of Vandyke’s portraits is dissimilar to Hogarth’s. The words “graveurs de moules,” I have translated literally “engravers of moulds,” for I cannot conceive what else Heineken can mean; but this expression is scarcely warranted by the word “figuersnider” on the cut, which is almost the same as the German “formschneider;” and whatever might be the original meaning of the word, it was certainly used to express merely a wood engraver. Compilers of Histories of Art, and Dictionaries of Painters and Engravers, who usually follow their leader, even in his slips, as regularly as a flock of sheep follow the bell-wether through a gap, have disseminated Heineken’s mistake, and the antiquity of “Phillery’s” wood-engraving is about as firmly established as Lawrence Coster’s invention of typography. One of those “straightforward” people has indeed gone rather beyond his authority; for in a “Dictionary of the Fine Arts,” published in 1826, we are expressly informed that “Phillery, who lived near the end of the fourteenth century, was the first engraver on wood who practised in the Netherlands.”V.84It is thus that311error on the subject of art, and indeed on every other subject, is propagated: a writer of reputation makes an incorrect or an ambiguous statement; other writers adopt it without examination, and not unfrequently one of that class whose confidence in deciding on a question is in the inverse ratio of their knowledge of the subject, proceeds beyond his original authority, and declares that to be certain which previously had only been doubtfully or obscurely expressed. In Heineken’s notice of this cut there is an implied qualification under which he might screen himself from a charge of incorrectness with respect to the time of its execution, though not from a charge of ambiguity. He says that, in his opinion, it is “the most ancient of the wood engravings executed in the Low Countrieswhich bear the name of the artist;” and with this limitation his opinion may be correct, although the cut were only engraved in 1525 or 1526; for I am not aware of any wood engraving of an earlier date, executed in the Low Countries, that contains thenameof the artist, though there are several which contain the artist’s mark. It also may be argued that the words “cet ancien tems” might be about as correctly applied to designate the year 1525 as 1470: if, however, he meant the first of those dates, he has expressed himself in an equivocal manner, for he is generally understood to refer the cut to a considerably earlier period. It has been indeed conjectured that Heineken, in speaking of this cut, might intentionally express himself obscurely, in order that he might not give offence to his friend Monsieur Mariette, who is said to have considered it to be one of the earliest specimens of wood engravings executed in the Low Countries. This is, however, without any sufficient reason, merely shifting the charge of ignorance, with respect to the difference of style in wood engravings of different periods, from Heineken to Monsieur Mariette. As there is no evidence to show that the latter ever expressed any such opinion as that ascribed to him respecting the antiquity of the cut in question, Heineken alone is answerable for the account contained in his book. Impressions of the cut by “Phillery” are not of very great rarity; there are two in the Print Room at the British Museum, and from one of them the reduced copy in the following page has been carefully made.
see text
Any person, however, slightly acquainted with the progress of wood engraving could scarcely fail to pronounce that the original of this cut must have been executed subsequent to 1500, and in all probability subsequent to the cuts of the Triumphal Procession of Maximilian, to the general style of which, so far as relates to the manner of engraving, it bears considerable resemblance. The costume of the figures, too, also proves that it does not belong to the fifteenth century;312and on carefully examining the inscription, a person accustomed to the old German or Dutch characters would be more likely to read “Willem” than “Phillery” as the name of the artist. To one of the impressions in the British Museum a former owner, after extracting Heineken’s account, has appended the following remark: “This is the print above described. There seems to be an inconsiderable mistake in the name, which I take to be D’villery.” It is to be observed that in the original, as in the preceding copy, the inscription is engraved on wood, and not set up in type; and that consequently the first character of the doubtful name is rather indistinct. It is however313most probably aW; and the last is certainly anm, with a flourish at its tail. The intermediate lettersilleare plain enough, and if the first be supposed to be aW, and the last anm, we have the nameWillem,—a very probable prenomen for a Dutch wood engraver of the sixteenth century. The inscription when carefully examined is literally as follows: “Gheprint Tantwerpen Bij mij Willem de Figuersnider.” Heineken’s mistake ofPhilleryforWillem, or William, and thus giving a heretofore unheard-of name to the list of artists, is not unlike that of Scopoli the naturalist, who, in one of his works, has commemorated “Horace Head” as a London bookseller.V.85
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Though the cut which bears the name of the supposed “Phillery” contains internal evidence of its not having been engraved in the fifteenth century, there is yet further reason to believe that it is merely a copy of part of a cut of the same size by a Swiss artist of the name of Urse Graff, which is dated 1524. There is an impression of Urse Graff’s cutV.86in the Print Room of the British Museum; in the fore-ground are the figures which have obviously been copied byWillem de Figuersnider, aliasPhillery, and immediately behind the middle figure, who holds in his right hand a large Swiss espadon, is a leafless tree with a figure of Death clinging to the upper part of the trunk, and pointing to a hour-glass which he holds in his left hand. A bird, probably intended for a raven, is perched above the hour-glass; and on the trunk of the tree, near to the figure of Death, is Urse Graff’s mark with the date as is here given. The back-ground presents a view of a lake, with buildings and mountains on the left. The general character of Urse Graff’s subject is Swiss, both in the scenery and figures; and the perfect identity of the latter with those in the cut “printed at Antwerp by William the figure-cutter” proves, beyond the possibility of a doubt, that one of those two artists has copied the work of the other. Urse Graff’s subject, however, is complete, and corresponds both in the landscape and in the costume of the figures with the country of the artist; while the cut of William of Antwerp represents merely an unrelieved group of figures in the costume of Switzerland. Urse Graff was an artist of reputation in his time; of “Willem,” who was probably only an engraver of the designs of others, nothing more is known beyond what is afforded by the single cut in question. From these circumstances,314though it cannot be positively decided which of those cuts is the original, it is almost morally certain that the Flemish figure-cutter has copied the work of the Swiss artist.—Urse Graff resided at Basle, of which city he was probably a native. In one of his engravings with the date 1523, he describes himself as a goldsmith and die-sinker. Wood-cuts containing his mark are not very common, and the most of them appear to have been executed between 1515 and 1528. A series of wood-cuts of the Passion of Christ, designed in a very inferior manner, and printed at Strasburg in 1509, are sometimes ascribed to him on account of their being marked with the letters V. G., which some writers have supposed to be the mark of an artist named Von Gamperlin. Professor Christ, in his Dictionary of Monograms, says that he can find nothing to determine him in favour of the name Gamperlin; and that he is rather inclined to think that those letters are intended for the name Von Goar, which he believes that he has deciphered on an engraving containing this mark. The mark of Urse Graff, a V and a G interlaced, occurs in the ornamented border of the title-page of several books printed at Basle, and amongst others on the title of a quarto edition of Ulrich Hutten’s Nemo, printed there by Frobenius in 1519. At the end of this edition there is a beautifully-designed cut of the printer’s device, which is probably the work of the same artist.V.87
A painter, named Nicholas Emanuel Deutsch, a contemporary of Urse Graff, and who resided at Bern, is said, by Sandrart, to have been of a noble English family, and the same writer adds that he left his own country on account of his religion. The latter statement, however, is not likely to be correct, for there are wood-cuts, with this artist’s mark, dated “Bern, 1518;” which was before the persecution in England on account of the doctrines of Luther had commenced. In J. R. Füssli’s Dictionary of Artists it is stated that he was of a French family, of the name of Cholard, but that he was born at Bern in 1484, and died there in 1530. He was a poet as well as a painter, and held one of the highest offices in the magistracy of Bern.
Within the first thirty years of the sixteenth century the practice of illustrating books with wood-cuts seems to have been more general than at any other period, scarcely excepting the present; for though within the last eight or ten years an immense number of wood-cuts have been executed in England and France, yet wood engravings at the time referred to were introduced into a greater variety of books, and the art was more generally practised throughout Europe. In315modern German and Dutch works wood engravings are sparingly introduced; and in works printed in Switzerland and Italy they are still more rarely to be found. In the former period the art seems to have been very generally practised throughout Europe, though to a greater extent, and with greater skill, in Germany than in any other country. The wood-cuts which are to be found in Italian books printed between 1500 and 1530 are mostly meagre in design and very indifferently engraved; and for many years after the German wood engravers had begun to give variety of colour and richness of effect to their cuts by means of cross-hatchings, their Italian contemporaries continued to adhere to the old method of engraving their figures, chiefly in outline, with the shadows and the folds of the draperies indicated by parallel lines. These observations relate only to the ordinary wood engravings of the period, printed in the same page with type, or printed separately in the usual manner of surface printing at one impression. The admirable chiaro-scuros of Ugo da Carpi, printed from two or more blocks, are for effect and general excellence the most admirable specimens of this branch of the art that ever have been executed; they are as superior to the chiaro-scuros of German artists as the usual wood engravings of the latter excel those executed in Italy during the same period.
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In point of drawing, some of the best wood-cuts executed in Italy in the time of Albert Durer are to be found in a folio work entitled Triompho di Fortuna, written by Sigismond Fanti, and printed at Venice in 1527.V.88The subject of this work, which was licensed by Pope Clement VII, is the art of fortune-telling, or of answering all kinds of questions relative to future events. The volume contains a considerable number of wood-cuts; some designed and executed in the very humblest style of wood engraving, and others, which appear to have been drawn on the block with pen-and-ink, designed with great316spirit. The smallest and most inferior cuts serve as illustrations to the questions, and an idea may be formed of them from the three here given, which occur under the question: “Qual fede o legge sia di queste tre la buona, o la Christiana, l’Hebrea, o quello di Mahumeto?”V.89In English: “Which of these three religions is the best, the Christian, the Jewish, or the Mahometan?” Several larger cuts are executed in a dry hard style, and evidently drawn by a person very inferior to the artist who designed the cuts executed in the manner of pen-and-ink drawings. The following is a fac-simile of one of the latter. It is entitled “Fortuna de Africo,” in a series of twelve, intended for representations of the winds.
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The following cut, which appears in folio 38, is intitled “Michael Fiorentino,”—Michael Angelo; and it certainly conveys no bad idea317of the energetic manner in which that great artist is said to have used his mallet and chisel when engaged on works of sculpture. This cut, however, is made to represent several other sculptors besides the great Florentine; it is repeated seven times in the subsequent pages, and on each occasion we find underneath it a different name. The late T. Stothard, R.A. was of opinion that wood engraving was best adapted to express pen-and-ink drawing, and that the wood engraver generally failed when he attempted more. His illustrations of Rogers’s poems, engraved on wood by Clennell and Thompson, are executed in a similar style to that of the following specimen, though with greater delicacy.
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Certain wood-cuts with the mark A. G., executed towards the conclusion of the fifteenth century, have been ascribed to an artist named Albert Glockenton. Bartsch, however, says that the name of the artist is unknown; and he seems to consider that Sandrart had merely conjectured that those letters might represent the name Albert Glockenton. For no better reason the letters I. V. on a tablet, with two pilgrim’s-staffs crossed between them, which are to be found on several old chiaro-scuro wood engravings, have been supposed to represent the name, John Ulric Pilgrim. This name appears to be a pure invention of some ingenious expounder of monograms, for there is not the slightest evidence, that I am aware of, to show that any artist of this name ever318lived. The chiaro-scuros with this mark were probably executed in the time of Durer, but none of them contains a date to establish the fact. Heineken considers them to have been the productions of a German artist; and he refers to them in proof of the art of chiaro-scuro having been practised in Germany long before the time of Ugo da Carpi. It is, however, highly questionable if they are of an earlier date than 1518; and it is by no means certain that the artist was a German. By some persons he has been supposed to have been the inventor of chiaro-scuro engraving, on no better grounds, it would seem, than that his pieces are without a date.
Next to the Germans, in the time of Albert Durer, the Dutch and Flemings seem to have excelled in the art of wood engraving; but the cuts executed in Holland and Flanders are generally much inferior to those designed and engraved by German artists. In a considerable number of Dutch wood engravings, of the period under review, I have observed an attempt to combine something like the effect of cross-hatching and of the dotted manner mentioned at page 232 as having been frequently practised by French wood engravers in the early part of the sixteenth century. In a series of cuts from a Dutch prayer-book, apparently printed between 1520 and 1530, this style of engraving is frequently introduced. Where a German artist would have introduced lines crossing each other with great regularity, the Dutch wood engraver has endeavoured to attain his object by irregularly picking out portions of the wood with the point of his graver; the effect, however, is not good. In the border surrounding those cuts, a Dance of Death is represented, consisting of several more characters than are to be found in the celebrated work ascribed to Holbein, but far inferior in point of design and execution.
An artist, named John Walter van Assen, is usually mentioned as one of the best Dutch wood engravers or designers of this period. Nothing further is known of him than that he lived at Amsterdam about 1517. The mark supposed to be Van Assen’s is often ascribed by expounders of monograms to another artist whom they call Werner or Waer van Assanen.
A considerable number of French works, printed in the time of Albert Durer, contain wood engravings, but few of them possess much merit when compared with the more highly finished and correctly drawn productions of the German school of the same period. The ornamental borders, however, of many missals and prayer-books, which then issued in great numbers from the Parisian press, frequently display great beauty. The taste for surrounding each page with an ornamental border engraved on wood was very generally prevalent in Germany, France, and Flanders at that period, more especially in devotional works; and in the319former country, and in Switzerland, scarcely a tract was printed—and the Lutheran controversy gave rise to many hundreds—without an ornamental border surrounding the title. In Germany such wood engravers as were chiefly employed in executing cuts of this kind were calledRahmen-schneiders—border-cutters,—as has been previously observed at page 190. In England during the same period wood engraving made but little progress; and there seems to have been a lack of good designers and competent engravers in this country. The best cuts printed in England in the time of Durer are contained in a manual of prayers, of a small duodecimo size. On a tablet in the border of one of the cuts—the Flight into EgyptV.90—I perceive the date 1523. The total number of cuts in the volume is about a hundred; and under each of the largest are four verses in English. Several of the smaller cuts, representing figures of saints, and preceding the prayers for their respective days, have evidently been designed by an artist of considerable talent. As most of the wood-cuts which constitute the ornaments or the illustrations of books printed at this period are without any name or mark, it is impossible to ascertain the names of the persons by whom they were designed or engraved.
The manner of wood engraving inintaglioso that the figures appear white on a black ground, so frequently adopted by early Italian wood engravers, was sometimes practised in Germany; and in one of the earliest works containing portraits of the Roman emperors,V.91copied from ancient medals, printed in the latter country, the cuts are executed in this style. The subject of the work is the lives of the Roman emperors, written by Joannes Huttichius, and the portraits with which it is illustrated are copied from medals in a collection which had been formed by the Emperor Maximilian, the great promoter of wood engraving in Germany. The first edition, in Latin, was printed by Wolff Köpffel, at Strasburg, in 1525; and a second edition, in German, was published at the same place in the succeeding year. The cut on the next page, of the head of Nero, will afford an idea of the style in which the portraits are320executed, and of the fidelity with which the artist has in general represented the likeness impressed on the original medals.
Besides Durer, Burgmair, Cranach, and Schaufflein, there are several other German painters of the same period who are also said to have engraved on wood, and among the most celebrated of this secondary class the following may be mentioned: Hans Sebald Behaim, previously noticed at page 253; Albert Altdorffer; Hans Springinklee; and Hans Baldung Grün. The marks of all those artists are to be found on wood-cuts executed in the time of Durer; but I am extremely doubtful if those cuts were actually engraved by themselves. If they were, I can only say that, though they might be good painters and designers, they were very indifferent wood engravers; and that their time in executing the subjects ascribed to them must have been very badly employed. The common workingformschneiderwho could not execute them as well, must have been a very ordinary wood-cutter, not to say wood-engraver,—by the latter term meaning one who excels in his profession, and not a mere cutter of lines, without skill or taste, on box or pear-tree.
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Albert Altdorffer was born at Ratisbon in 1480, and afterwards became a magistrate of his native city. The engravings on wood and copper containing his mark are mostly of a small size, and he is generally known as one of thelittle mastersof the German school of engraving.V.92Hans Springinklee was a painter of some eminence, and according to Doppelmayer, as referred to by Bartsch, was a pupil of Durer’s. His mark is to be found on several wood-cuts; and it occurs in one of the illustrations in the Wise King. Hans Baldung Grün was born at Gemund in Suabia, and studied at Nuremberg under Albert Durer. He excelled as a painter; and the wood-cuts which contain his321mark are mostly designed with great spirit. The earliest wood engraving that contains his mark is a frontispiece to a volume of sermons with the date 1508; and the latest is a group of horses, engraved in a hard, stiff manner, with the name “Baldung” and the date 1534.V.93He chiefly resided at Strasburg, where he died in 1545. He is mentioned by Durer, in his Journal, by the name of “Grün Hannsen.”
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We may here conveniently introduce fac-similes on a reduced scale of two rather interesting wood engravings given by Dr. Dibdin in his Bibliomania, and copied from an early folio volume, entitledRevelationes cœlestes sanctæ Brigittæ de Suecia, printed at Nuremberg by Anthony Köberger,M CCC XXI.mensis Septembris, which some read 1500, on the 21st of September, others 1521, in the month of September. The first of these cuts is curious as representing the simplicity of an ancient reading room, with its three-legged joint stool, such as is so prettily described by Cowper, Task, I. v. 19; the other cut describes a punishment322which is said to have been revealed to St. Bridget against those ladies who have “ornamenta indecentia capitibus et pedibus, et reliquis membris, ad provocandam luxuriam, et irritandum Deum, in strictis vestibus, ostensione mamillarum, unctionibus, &c.” The artist is unknown, but seems to be among the best of the Nuremberg school.
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It cannot be reasonably doubted that Durer and several other German painters of his time were accustomed to engrave their own designs on copper; for in many instances we have the express testimony of their contemporaries, and not unfrequently their own, to the fact. Copper-plate engraving for about sixty years from the time of its invention was generally practised by persons who were also painters, and who usually engraved their own designs. Wood engraving, on the contrary, from an early period was practised as a distinct profession by persons who are never heard of as painters. That some of the early German painters—of a period when “artists were more of workmen, and workmen more of artists”V.94than in the present day—mightengrave some of the wood-cuts which bear their marks, is certainly not impossible; but it is highly improbable that all the wood-cuts which are ascribed to them should have been executed by themselves. If any wood-cuts were actually engraved by Durer, Cranach, Burgmair, and other painters of reputation, I conceive that such cuts are not to be distinguished by their superior execution from those engraved by the professionalformschneiderandbrief-malerof the day. The best copper-plates engraved by Albert Durer can scarcely be surpassed by the best copper-plate engraver of the present day,—that is, supposing him to execute his work by the same means; while the best of the wood-cuts which he is supposed to have engraved himself might be readily executed by a score of modern323wood engravers if the subject were drawn for them on the block. In the age of Durer the best wood-cuts are of comparatively large size, and are distinguished more from the boldness and freedom of their design than from any peculiar excellence of engraving: they display, in fact, rather the talent of theartistthan the skill of theworkman. Though wood engraving had very greatly improved from about the end of the fifteenth century to the time of Durer’s decease, yet it certainly did not attain its perfection within that period. In later years, indeed, the workman has displayed greater excellence; but at no time does the art appear to have been more flourishing or more highly esteemed than in the reign of its great patron, the Emperor Maximilian.
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